


Coping Mechanisms

by golden_d



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Community: writerinadrawer, Gen, Pre-Canon, WriterInADrawer 4.07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-30
Updated: 2010-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-10 20:53:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/104159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/golden_d/pseuds/golden_d
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This story is part of a short-duration writing contest.  Please do not comment on this story, positively or negatively, until this notice is removed.  If you are interested in this contest please visit http://community.livejournal.com/writerinadrawer.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Coping Mechanisms

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of a short-duration writing contest. Please do not comment on this story, positively or negatively, until this notice is removed. If you are interested in this contest please visit http://community.livejournal.com/writerinadrawer.

Jack's first thought upon meeting Alex Hopkins was that he was a likable, well-adjusted, genial sort of man. Alex was now head of Torchwood Three because David had just died, and considering that David had been a bastard with a face like a frog, Alex seemed like a step in the right direction. "I'm making you head of field ops," he said, with no pleasantries or preamble. "I did the math, and we've been paying you more to freelance than we would if you'd been part of the team. So." Alex raised a glass of Scotch. "Here's to pay cuts, and welcome aboard."

"I didn't say yes," Jack argued, offended by that, and also that he hadn't been offered anything to drink. Alex looked like he had a fully-stocked dry bar in the back of his office. "Is this the new Torchwood way, not giving people an option?"

Alex looked amused. "I thought you knew. That's always been the Torchwood way."

So Jack was head of field ops, and Celia (bonnie, dark-haired Celia) was their doctor, a brilliant chemist with a slightly twisted mind. She was the one who'd figured out how to distill Retcon into pill form after they'd discovered the liquid formula buried deep in the archives. It was a relief to stop shooting people, Alex said, and Jack agreed.

Victor was skinny and witty and constantly on edge, and all that and the fact that he was a technical genius meant that he reminded Jack strongly of Alan Turing. He mentioned that, once, and the next day Alex took him aside and told him to keep it in his pants. "You're not freelance anymore," Alex reminded him. "You can't keep relating to the team the same way. There's no leaving if things go bad," which Jack took to mean that Alex might have read between the lines in his file. What it boiled down to was that Jack could fraternise (fraternise! how delightfully old-fashioned) with whomever he wanted--as long as they weren't on staff.

It wasn't an issue with Morgan, who, despite his dark curls and long-lashed eyes, was resolutely straight and resolutely married. Jack resolved to pine from afar, and decided the key was to sleep with lots of other Welshpersons to make himself feel better. Their vowels were irresistible. So, yes, he followed Alex's advice. Alex seemed like he gave good advice, like he wanted to look after his people.

And that was what he was: A capable leader, administratively gifted enough to keep both Torchwood's complicated finances and its complicated team under control, with good taste in alcohol. A solid, Scottish sort of bloke.

And at 2100 hours on December 31, 1999, Jack went out to take care of the Millennium Bug, a thirty-foot long, eight-foot high, milli-toothed millipede. It died easily enough once he tracked it down, but it took Jack awhile to clean goo off of the brand new SUV.

"When you joked about the Millennium Bug, I didn't realize it was going to have eighteen legs full of poison!" Jack called, jovially entering the Hub. "Anyone home? You know you're supposed to party like it's--"

First thought: The team must have been partying pretty hard already. Second thought: Reality. Victor, on the ground, shot execution-style through the head. Celia, near him, bled out from a gut wound. A glance upwards revealed Morgan, draped over the rail of the balcony. And Alex--"Alex! What happened? Who did this?"--sitting on a stool, cradling a gun in his hands, gripping a locket, shaking and stricken and--

Alex. Dead, with his blood all over Jack's face.

In a couple hundred years of life, Jack had never liked vomiting, so he swallowed his bile and set to work; he cleaned off his face, threw Alex unceremoniously into a vault, and laid his coworkers to rest. Scrubbed blood off the floor until his hands were blistered, overdosed on Retcon (_oh_, Celia) to get rid of the blisters, drank half of Alex's liquor, and then went to tell Morgan's wife that he was dead.

When he returned to the Hub, covered in snot and tears that weren't all his own, he drank the rest of it.

Jack's New Year Resolution was to keep UNIT and Torchwood One from finding out about this as long as possible. That required paperwork, which is how Jack discovered stacks and stacks of forms in the room beneath Alex's office that had never been signed, never filled out, that the accounts that Alex had been so good at handling were all but in the red, and evidently he'd been very, very good at faking the books. No wonder he'd decided to cut Jack's pay.

**Hub in Lockdown,** Jack emailed to Yvonne. **Just me and the bodies. Rest of team given week off. Call you if there's any trouble.**

**You never call, you never write,** Yvonne wrote back. **Make sure Victor gets those codes together by the end of the month. You owe me a report about the Bug's venom. Any biological weapon potential?**

Jack's note back was brief: **Had to burn it to get it killed, sorry about that. There's no venom left.**

After that there was no time to battle with Yvonne; Jack had more important things to do. He was a former con, after all; he knew how to do some strategic money laundering--he'd established his first accounts in the Cayman Islands in 1903. A couple transfers here, a few more there, and Torchwood would have money again. Then he'd pay all the bills and give the team's families substantial "life insurance" payouts. Follow up on all the cases Alex had handled for the last god-knew how many years, see if they'd actually been handled, and tie up all the loose ends.

When all of that was done, Jack would begin the recruitment process. Torchwood would reopen for business.

No rest for the weary, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of a short-duration writing contest. Please do not comment on this story, positively or negatively, until this notice is removed. If you are interested in this contest please visit http://community.livejournal.com/writerinadrawer.


End file.
